An AVAIL Conversation: Miles McPherson on fighting racism by focusing on similarity versus differences

AVAIL Media Host, Virgil Sierra, recently sat down with Miles McPherson for the AVAIL Podcast. Miles McPherson is the pastor of the Rock Church in San Diego and former defensive back for the San Diego Chargers. His book, The Third Option: Hope for a Racially Divided Nation, addresses the cultural tendency to side with one group against another—us vs. them, cops vs. protestors, Blacks vs. whites, racists vs. the woke. McPherson argues that the people of God must reclaim their witness by choosing a “third option.” Miles also developed an accompanying “similarity training” curriculum called Third Option Training, which helps churches, businesses and organizations implement the principles laid out in the book. To listen to the entire conversation—and others like it—subscribe to the AVAIL Podcast.

AVAIL: Tell us a little bit about your story.

Miles McPherson: I grew up in New York. I had a dream to play in the NFL, played Pop Warner football in high school, in college went to a Division Three school, the University of New Haven in Connecticut. I was the first player drafted and played in the NFL with the Los Angeles Rams. I got cut and then went and played four years with the San Diego Chargers. The first two years I was doing cocaine and not walking with God. And then some of my teammates shared the gospel with me on the team plane. They confronted me and really pinned me down on what I believed and whether I would go to heaven? And I had just been doing cocaine in the bathroom of the team plane. We had a really good conversation, but after that, I still continued to do cocaine. Then one day, five o’clock in the morning, I had done cocaine all night, and I just said, “God, I can’t do this anymore,” and just surrendered my life to Christ. And that was the last day I did cocaine. Then I started sharing the gospel in churches, prisons and schools and started a Bible study at my house. And here we are, 38 years later, pastoring the Rock Church here in San Diego. We have five campuses and online as well.

AVAIL: You experienced racism, not just from one side, but from both white and black people. Tell us a little bit about the pain that racism caused you growing up and how the Lord helped you turn that into a tool for unity.

Miles: So, I have a white grandmother, half black, Chinese grandmother, two black grandfathers and my black grandfather who married my white grandmother. He wasn’t allowed in the front door of her house when he married her—they cut her off. They lived 15 minutes from us. I never even knew that until after I started writing this book. I lived in a black neighborhood, went to school in a white neighborhood, got harassed in the white neighborhood ’cause I wasn’t white, got called white boy in the black neighborhood ’cause I wasn’t black enough. So I was always feeling like I was in between. My family was diverse, and my football teams were diverse, but we all got along. Martin Luther King was alive at that time—he was killed when I was eight. But I do remember him and remember feeling, What are we gonna do now? Because I looked to him to fix all this. So, because of what I’ve experienced growing up, all those years kind of came to fruition in this book called The Third Option.

AVAIL: Can you tell us a little bit about the book?

Miles: If you look on television, or just listen to conversations with you and your family, there's this “us versus them” spirit in the world. You’re either for or against the police, for or against the Republican party, Democrats, Fox, CNN. If you pick one side, you are automatically the enemy of the other side, and you can’t ever agree with them or you become a sellout and they will cancel you. So you’re walking on eggshells, and every time you’re in a conversation, people listen for code words to tell them what side you’re on: us or them. The third option is that we honor what we have in common, we focus on the things that we have in common, instead of first going to the things where we have differences. If we can give honor to the fact that we all have pain, we all have dreams, that we’re more similar than different in all kinds of ways, we’re all equally human, we’re all made in the image of God—with that comes the ability and responsibility to love God and have a relationship with God. If we could focus on that, we all have the same mission to glorify God. If that is our focus, versus the peripheral issues of society, then we would see ourselves coming together instead of positioning ourselves against someone and for someone else.

AVAIL: What I really like about your book is that you gave us some language, you gave us some terminology to help us describe something that we know or we’ve noticed, but we just haven’t been able to put our finger on it. You describe it as “in group bias” and “out group discrimination.” Can you talk to us a little bit about those two?

Miles: We all self-segregate every day. This is not only racial; it’s in every area of our life. We walk into a room, we talk to people and we automatically size them up. Are they like me? Are they not like me? Are they gonna believe what I believe or not believe what I believe? Then we say, “They’re like me, that’s my in group.” Or we say, “They’re not like me. That’s my out group.” We won’t necessarily use the words “in group” and “out group,” but that’s what we’re doing. And once I identify someone who is like me, I’m gonna be more comfortable speaking with them, hanging out with them. I’m gonna give them preferential treatment. I’m gonna talk to them more readily. I’m probably gonna give them the benefit of the doubt quicker than the people who are not like me. If we would recognize that, we would also recognize how quickly and how much bias we walk around with and how we see everything through a lens of our own biases. So we need to take those glasses off and put the third option glasses on and realize that everybody is more similar to you than not. Everybody’s made in the image of God. Everybody has blood. Everybody has a heart. Everybody has a brain, everybody has a destiny God’s put on their life.

AVAIL: Why do you think so many leaders are so afraid to talk about division and racism—especially white pastors?

Miles: White people have a different history with racism than people of color. Obviously, racism and discrimination are global. They’re not a white or black thing. They’re a human thing. White pastors are gonna think, OK, I’m inexperienced at dealing with racism. I’m not a racist. It’s over there. And people of color have experienced of brunt of it all our lives, not only our lives, but our fathers’ grandfathers’, et cetera. In white churches, the pastor’s concern is, What are my white followers in the congregation gonna think? Am I gonna make them feel like I'm coming after them? A lot of times, when white people hear this topic, they brace for being called a racist. But I can be racially offensive and not be racist. If someone accuses you of offending them, it doesn't necessarily mean you’re racist. Now you may be, but you can be innocently ignorant and your innocent ignorant statements can be hurtful. That’s one of the things to help people work through. Because if people don’t realize they could be racially offensive and not be racist, they will deny anything they do as racially offensive and never learn. Once they get over, then they can learn and not carry the condemnation of having to be a racist. By the way, if you are racist, guess what? God can heal you. That’s what he’s all about. So it’s better to acknowledge it, and then let’s move on.

AVAIL: Some people say, “I don’t see color.” Something that you talk about in the book is that there’s a beauty in acknowledging and seeing color. Can you touch on that?

Miles: First, racism is spiritual before it’s political. Racism says, “Because you have a different color, accent, whatever, the image of God in you is inferior to the image of God in me.” It is not political first. The politics is a way of executing that point of view. It’s spiritual first, it’s relational second and then it’s political. To answer your question, white people don’t say about white people, “I don’t see your color.” It only happens when people of color are in the conversation. Your eyes process 90% of your brain activity—shape, motion, depth and color. Your eyes can’t not see color. Everybody has a color. God just wants us to love each other and appreciate who we are based on his design and his creation. And so, instead of saying you don't see color, see the color, acknowledge it and give honor to it. If you ignore the color, you’re ignoring the burden that comes with it. You’re ignoring the conversation that needs to happen.

AVAIL: So, what are some of the practical things leaders can do to address these biases?

Miles: In our Third Option training, the very first discussion we have is to pair people up and have them compare and list all the things that they have in common. And when you realize that the things you have in common, you’ll discover that you have more in common with that person than differences. I would challenge all the people out there to find someone that’s in your world—hopefully you have someone in your world, your circle that of different ethnicity, gender socioeconomic, whatever—and just say, “Hey, let’s compare to things that we like, things that we want to be in 10 years, and list all the things we have in common.” It’s a pretty innocent exercise, and I would challenge people to start seeing through the lens of how are we the same versus how are we different.